Last month I joined Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and John David Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor at Duke University at the National Press Club to discuss the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on a panel titled "The Islamist Threat: From Af-Pak to Jyllands-Posten and Times Square." The event was moderated by Elan Journo, Fellow and Director of Policy Research at Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. My segment begins around the 27 minute mark.

Here is the headline of the justly respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) dated September 29th. “Terrorverdächtiger festgenommen. Amerikaner wollte Pentagon mit Modellflugzeugen angreifen“. (Terror suspect arrested "An American wanted to attack the Pentagon with model airplanes".) 

The text lets one discover that the “American” impostor intending to conduct his Jihad against the Pentagon is a Rezwan X. In itself, the term that is used here is a supportive and obedient bow before the altar of PC. As always in such cases, the phrasing serves to blunt the message and to protect the unworthy. It is hardly likely that the official US citizenship of Rezwan had much to do with his self-perceived identity and whatever possible loyalties that might have arisen out of the implied commitment to America. 

Many English speakers use the terms freedom and liberty interchangeably, but these terms have different meanings. You would not hear someone say, "I have liberty from cancer." He would say, "I am free from cancer." Most other languages have only one word for both liberty and freedom, and some languages have no word to explain these English-language concepts.

When Robinson Crusoe found himself stranded on an island, he had liberty but was not free to leave because there was no way out. When Friday showed up, they had to decide if they would both have liberty or if one of them would try to dominate or repress the other.

1. Consistency deserves praise. As so often, a significant portion of our species is stubborn. Some of these score high in the realm of stupidity and the “meanly crooked.” Take Germany’s “Left Party”. Its antecedent Communists lost power when the “GDR” folded, after which it called itself “The Party of Democratic Socialists”. It did not matter that the terms used ignore a choice to be made. In practice, the preference for “socialism” over “democracy” had always been clear. It is therefore no surprise that the party has congratulated Fidel Castro for the “successful activity” which distinguishes his presence in politics. It is to be doubted that they meant to praise the Leader for keeping masses of 1950 vintage American cars continue to run circles around his junkyard. The other achievement is that he stayed in power by keeping his people handcuffed. Quite an achievement if compared to the entity that the Kremlin had set up in the Soviet zone of occupation. It checked out once Moscow could not send tanks to maintain “panzer-Communism” there.

Minor news items can at first appear to be insignificant and as such “useless” for the commentator. However, once a stroke of lightning provides the connecting idea, these items become united in an unanticipated context. Once this happens, the small pebbles transmute into the supporting beams of a significant story. This is what happened in the case of the news bits behind this essay. 

For the fourth time in about six months, Obama presents a deficit reduction plan. He does this after setting the world record in deficit spending over the last three years. But, just as his other three proposals, this new plan is tossed out as well. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are unable to pass his massive increase in taxes. The President knew that before hand. He’s just playing political theater. Only his job, his reelection is important to him. He offers insane schemes, and then when Congress doesn’t agree, he travels the land with all the luster of a President to blame the Republicans for the stalling economy, not the Democrat Senators who don’t follow him either. Obama insults the Republicans and paints them as obstructionists, who throw grandmother off the cliff, who close schools, who stop scientific research, etc.

Having passed the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I can now say with certainty that something major was missing from all of the ceremonies, the symbolism and the media coverage. It was something that not only captures the meaning of the attacks themselves, but better defines our response to them than any other single thing. It is the face of the age itself, and it is not Osama bin Laden's.

The End of the World is an apocalyptic myth that first becomes prominent in religious speculation in the period of Late Antiquity. St. John’s Apocalypse, included as the last book of the New Testament, is the best-known item in the genre, with its elaborate visions of Armageddon and the Last Judgment. Persistently, however, since the French Revolution, the myth of the End of the World has secularized itself, expressing its eschatological anxiety in terms of entirely this-worldly events. In the Twentieth Century, the End of the World became a staple of “scientific romance” or science fiction, where it often concerned the perfection of destructive instrumentality. In England beginning in the 1870s, the foreign invasion story became popular. In George Tomkyns Chesney’s many times reprinted Battle of Dorking (1871), Kaiser Wilhelm I, not content with the defeat of France at Sedan, pushes on through Belgium and the Netherlands, crosses the Channel, and reduces Britain to vassalage. Sometimes the invasion involved the so-called Yellow Peril, an onslaught, in some non-specific near future, by militarized hordes of Chinese or Japanese, who overwhelm Europe.

After Belgium: The Orderly Split-Up is a rather misleading book.  Or perhaps it is better to understand the book differently than its title suggests.  Ostensibly, it argues for and catalogs reasons why we must expect the legitimate dissolution and transformation of Belgium into constituent parts based primarily on cultural ethnicity.  As such, After Belgium is mostly of interest to European political observers.  However, this misses the book’s greater value as a coherent and in-depth discussion about the politics of nationhood altogether, a discussion that transcends any one set of local politics.  And it is this latter aspect that recommends the book to larger audiences than would otherwise be the case.

Sovereignty, security, and their protection by the UN.

1. Duly Noted must begin with a surreal suggestion. The very fact that it can be stated and that the reader might, after reflection, find the “surreal suggestion” realistic, tells much about current condition of America. About that condition, an introductory comment is needed: The distress of the US does not have its origins in society, its order, or its will to perform. The political system and its management by its insiders are largely responsible for the fix.  The “American” is responsible only to the extent that he is inclined to be enticed by chimeras. Therefore, he runs the risk of giving power to those that are unable to use it constructively.